It’s been a while, but next month, one of our favorite books “Skullkickers” returns to comic land with its fifth arc and 25th issue. Set in the dwarven homeland of Dwayre, the arc will focus on the Dwarf and his history as we gear up for the grand finale in the sixth arc, all of which is sure to be a blast.
So in excitement of the upcoming return of “Skullkickers” after a six-month break, we chat with Zub about all things “Skullkickers” — from teases about the upcoming arc, to the economics behind the book to the fans and everything in between in one ginormous, all-encompassing skull-kicking interview!
So I hear you’ve got this book… “The Skull Kickings,” I think it’s called?
Jim Zub: Right, yes, it’s a new thing that’s the old thing that’s the new thing. [Laughs]
You and I, we haven’t talked about “Skullkickers” in a long time. And when we last left off in the series with our valiant heroes, you’d taken them through five reboots.
JZ: [Laughs] I didn’t take them through five reboots! There were five different adjectives attached to the cover, but the story was consistent. We were just doing the next part of the story. We were viciously abusing the numerical system of the modern comic era, if you will.
But if memory serves, it worked out for you guys, right?
JZ: It did! Here’s one of the interesting discussions, and I think this is sort of a broader discussion that people should be having. So, in an industry where everyone is trying to get your attention and trying to sustain your attention from month to month to month with their comics, and one of the only consistent ways to do that is to throw a big, fat #1 on the cover, how do you sustain a readership? How do you sustain continuity from month to month? How do you maintain attention from month to month, when people are constantly hunting for the new thing, the newer thing and the newest thing?
When issue #25 of “Skullkickers” comes out in March, and in the current industry that almost makes us venerable. That’s crazy. An issue #25 is like, “Oh, you guys made it that far?”
Nobody gets that far anymore!
JZ: Especially a creator-owned book, weirdly enough. But what does that mean? What is this industry doing? And I’m not saying that in a negative or a positive way, I’m saying that in a very neutral way, that it’s an interesting discussion. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know if it means anything. It’s just a fascinating time for comics as a whole, in a sense.
Absolutely. And I thought that it was funny, just because you look at what Marvel or DC is doing, and it has become very natural now to see all these new #1s. But then “Skullkickers” does it, and we’re all like, oh, hey, maybe we got too comfortable with this.
JZ: And the weird thing was, we sort of did it as a total lark. I’m not saying the real industry is going to do five #1s in five months, but it feels like the #1s have upped the ante over the last few months, or the last year even. There seems like there’s this greater proliferation that that is now just a thing; even if it’s the same creative team, even if it’s the same book, we’re literally just going to throw a #1 on there as part of our standard marketing procedure. Which I think is neat and weird, at the same time.
So the last time that we saw the Skullkickers, and I was actually shocked when I realized this, but the last time we saw the team was back in August of 2013. And I think, please correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this is the longest break we’ve seen between arcs.
JZ: Yeah, that’s correct — and it’s been for the best of reasons. I never want to solicit a book if I don’t know for sure that we’re going to be able to hit it. I think that’s disingenuous to the retailers and I think it’s disingenuous to the readers, and so I always make sure that we’re in a good space, that we have material banked and that we can hit our deadlines. So the good news is, is both Edwin and I are very busy; we’ve had other opportunities coming up, so it just turned out that we had a longer break. We looked at it and said we could probably swing January or February, but then we’d be in this pressure cooker situation by the time we got to the end of the story arc, so why not give ourselves a little bit extra breathing room and make sure it’s all going to be the way we want it, the quality we want, rather than rushing it our or doing something we’re not going to be as proud of.
Continued belowWe’re at a point where, I’m not saying our readership can’t grow because I think it can always grow, but we know who is going to be coming back for an issue #25, you know? We’ve got our readership, and if we take an extra month they’re not going to all suddenly jump ship or something.
So, not including the “Before Skullkickers” issue, but in the storyline they’d just ended up back in the dwarf’s homeland, in Dwayre. What do we have coming up with the new arc of the book? It’s ‘A Dozen Cousins and a Crumpled Crown,’ and I actually noticed recently that all the arcs are, like, a number and a something, which I think is funny.
JZ: Right, it’s a number, it’s a countdown, and I think I probably should’ve been smarter about that. If I was smarter about that, I probably would’ve started that first one as “A Number One”, and then “A Number Two” so it could be numerical all the way across. But, no, so our second volume is “Five Funerals and a Bucket of Blood.” But it’s always a number and a thing; it has this pulp-y feel to the title, and I always love that. It makes me happy. And really, I guess I’m the first audience I want to please when it comes to this thing.
So we have a really cool storyline coming up. It’s very dwarf-centric, as you might imagine, so it’s the home of the dwarves and it’s all about the Dwarf’s past and how he got himself into all of these things. It’s much in the same way we did the third story arc, where we had our gunman, Big Guy Rex and his adventures, how he found the gun and that sort of thing. We’ve got some extra secrets to reveal of the Dwarf, and I’m very excited about all that stuff.
We have a mocking but sort of lore-building, where we’ll have the history of the dwarves as a race, which I think should be a lot of fun and ridiculous. So, just generally continuing to push buttons and play with fantasy tropes and build up to what will be our sixth arc, which will be our final arc. This is the last laying of ground work for some of the big, ludicrous, dare-I-say cosmically ridiculous stuff that is coming in the final story arc.
See, it’s interesting because you actually just stole one of the questions I was going to use as a talking point. I remember, a while back, you talked about “Skullkickers” as a three-act structure; three hardcovers or six trades. So this is the fifth arc, and I imagine that you guys are kind of hyper-focused to where you’re going now at the end.
JZ: Right, so it’s the last sort of sprint as we’re heading into the big pay-off. It’s fascinating because, it feels weird to be even moving this close to the end. We’ve got all these disparate parts that we put into play and I purposefully peppered in to this series, and now I’m really looking forward to watching all the threads tie together in fun and ridiculous ways; hpefully still unexpected ways to the reader, so we can pay it all off with big, joyous fantasy insanity at the very end.
I remember, back when you were first initially doing promotion for the series, and you talked about how you wanted to keep the book a bit more loose, aways in the idea that it could be new-reader friendly whenever. So at issue #25, where we’re pretty knee-deep in the story, are you still trying to keep that new-reader friendly aspect in the book?
JZ: Well, I think one of the things we do intentionally is, we’ve always got that recap at the start of each story arc. So we have the little old lady, who is changing with each iteration a little bit, and she gives you a quick overview of all the main information you need as a whole: this is what’s gone on, this is what is important and this is how it pays off, or this is what we’re heading into. And the broad storytelling elements of these two monster-hunting mercenary idiots is a relatively straight-forward premise. It’s not very difficult to get. And yes, there’s more complexities in terms of some of the dimensional stuff and the weird time stuff we’ve played with, but I think…
Continued belowWell, when I grew up in comics, you could jump into an issue of “X-Men” or “Spider-Man,” and you would always know the baseline. I feel like we try and keep that; here’s two idiots, they hunt monsters and they get themselves into capers. There’s more to it than that, but if you know that, you can start and you can just get into it. And, you know, I was sort of please with the last story-arc where we had our five new #1s, and the majority of those being right in the smack middle of the arc, and we’d get people occasionally who would say, “I’ll admit, I started with “Savage Skullkickers” #1 or “Dark Skullkickers Dark,” it’s ridiculous and I know I’ve been played, but I was engaged enough and amused enough that I wanted to see it through.” That, I think, is hopefully a sign that we’re doing something right.
If people get a taste of it and they know we make it as easy as possible to not only catch up but also move forward and backwards, whether that’s buying trades or getting it digital or reading it online through our webcomic serialization, then there’s multiple outlets to get on board “Skullkickers” and get yourself up to date. This isn’t “X-Men” continuity, this isn’t some multi-multi-multi-multi-dimensional, decades-worth of continuity whatever. Not that you can’t get into “X-Men,” but it ain’t that difficult — and if people enjoy the characters, I think they go the extra mile to get themselves up to snuff.
Looking back, the series launched in 2010 — which, like, I never realize how time passes anymore, or that it’s 2014.
JZ: [Laughs] Right? It feels like a science fiction date when you put it on something.
Exactly! And, now with the fifth arc and issue #25, what about the process of creating an issue of “Skullkickers” has changed 25 issues in?
JZ: Well, obviously Edwin and I are so much more comfortable working with each other. We’ve got such a great working relationship where you’re no longer starting from zero. If I’m doing a work-for-hire project and I don’t know who the artist is, you have to write so much more material because you have to make sure you’re filling in all those gaps since you don’t know who is going to be doing it. And I never have that problem with Edwin. We have this working relationship and it’s very much building on the structure that we’ve previously established. So, whether it’s the jokes or the way we’re playing scenes out or referencing older issues, scripts are more terse, they’re more punchy and simple, and we get right to the meat of it since I don’t have to over-explain who the characters are or what they’re capable of in that sense. Which is really nice.
There’s just a trust across the whole creative team. Whether that’s in the coloring with what Misty is doing, or with the letters by Marshall, we’re all very comfortable with working with each other. That comes through, I think, in the competence of the storytelling and the competence of the issues. I look back at those early issues and they seem weirdly raw to me, in the sense that we were figuring out how to do things or how far we could push certain expressions. How the jokes would play, if you will. We don’t really have that problem as much anymore. Humor is subjective so some people will find things more funny than others, but we kind of know what we enjoy more, and we’re less second-guessing ourselves. Is this going to work? Is this going to play? And that feels really good as a whole.
In addition, I think we’re all a little bit faster. Edwin, he used to be, more often than not, he was a page a day kid; now he has no problem. When he’s on schedule, he is cranking out five pages in a week, or six pages into the weekend with a Sunday off. He is rock solid in terms of his quality and in terms of his delivery. It sounds a little bit corny, but we know our own productivity. I know it’ll take me this many days to do a script, and I can set aside the time and sit down and be, like, “Ok, lets get in the mood for “Skullkickers!” Lets ramp it up and really tear into it!” And it feels so different doing “Skullkickers” compared to any other project, because it’s ours and, in many cases, it’s story material that I’ve been planning to do for a long time and now I’m finally getting to it. It’s not like I’m generating it whole-cloth; we’ve had most of the plan in place the whole time. It’s like, oh, we’re finally here, we’re finally at this chunk of story that I’ve been waiting for for quite some time, and that’s kind of a cool feeling.
Continued belowAnd the series has certainly grown exponentially, both in terms of the cast and the scope since it first started.
JZ: Absolutely, and that’s intentional as well. We’re amping up the ridiculousness. There’s more at stake, there’s bigger, almost cosmic elements coming into play. Stuff that originally would come off as little one-off coincidences, you start realizing that they’re coming back around, that sort of thing. And that’s something that is very intentional, and it has been a lot of fun to play with.
And if we never got to this, well, the series was originally pitched as that first, five-issue arc. And Eric Stephenson said, “we like the book, it’s selling well, so do you want to do more?” And of course I said absolutely, so he said think about what we wanted to do and I came up with, for lack of a better term, the master plan for what would eventually be these six story arcs. So there’s the back-up plan of, well, if it doesn’t do well we can just do four, and if it does OK we can end it early, but being able to end it right, now that we’re in the final third, we are going to the wall. I hope obviously our sales will sustain us as strong as possible, but regardless, we’re taking it to the hoop. Like it or don’t like it, this is the story I want to tell and we’re going to do this — and that feels really cool.
I talked to some people and they said to me, “well, you could’ve done four or five mini-series in the same period of time. You could have thrown five or six different ideas against the wall, but you’ve just been doing “Skullkickers.”” And, yeah, but I like the idea of having that block of work that is mine, and we did what we set out to do, you know what I mean? Not to be against anyone else, I totally appreciate that some other people will throw it all against the wall and see what sticks, and if it’s not a huge massive hit they do another thing. There’s something to be said for that, but that’s kind of not how I’ve approached it; I have other work that I’m going to do, I have another creator-owned project in the wings and it’s definitely coming out this year, which I’m very excited about. I’ve got a couple other ones that I’m developing with artists, and its just been a matter of finding the right timing and schedule for us to release them and for us to do them.
But “Skullkickers,” for lack of a better term, it’s just really built my career as a writer. I don’t forget that. That is very important to me, to see it through to the end.
I think “Skullkickers” is also, like, this mini-phenomenon, too–
JZ: Phenomenon! That’s pretty hyperbolic, there.
I was going to say, not to to over-hype or whatever, but there’s the Munchkin cards and, well, not for nothing but I think you led this focused conversation about what can be done when you just put your comics online for free and let people have it. “Skullkickers” is, in many ways, a very important comic right now.
JZ: Well thank you. It’s interesting, because part of that discussion, and the fear that people had about digital, well, we sort of lived the transition. We’re now, I think, we’re on the other side of the digital divide. Even two years ago, there was this discussion of digital comics vs. print comics, and we’ve all kind of seen the writing on the wall that says digital is absolutely crucial to the future of comics and it can live as print lives. They can both co-exist. People were so afraid that one was going to destroy the other, like it was an if/and situation, that you had to pick a side. Are you digital? Are you print? And if you cross that line you’re not on our team anymore! I’m on team comics, man. I’m totally cool with everything.
What I think has been seen to be true, and something that I’ve said for quite a while is, that the more outlets of availability simultaneously? The better. If you are catering to everyone, as many outlets as possible, then you’ll find hopefully the largest possible audience for the work, and the quality of the work becomes paramount instead of just the distribution model. So we’ve got the serialized, older chapters online like a webcomic, and we picked up tons of readers through there — and I know for a fact that those readers would not have found us through comic shops, and they would not have found us on Comixoloy.
Continued belowI’ll give you the absolute proof of that. So, currently on the webcomic version of “Skullkickers,” we are just starting arc #4, ’80 Eyes on an Evil Island’. And at the start of that arc, the Dwarf is floating dead in the water for an entire issue, right? That was, in comic print form, that was one issue where people were reading that and they were enjoying it. In webcomic form, because we only update two to three pages a week, that joke with the dwarf in the water dead is going to last for almost two months of updates. [Laughs] And our online readership has been raging! I’ve been getting hate mail! I’ve been getting posts on the Facebook wall and hatemail where it’s like, “I can’t believe you killed the dwarf, how dare you, stop taunting us, you have to bring him back. What are you doing? Zub, you terrible bastard, what are you doing!” I’m like… with minimal amounts of effort, you could find out what happens next to the dwarf. But these are our webcomic readers who discovered our comic through the web and are reading it ostensibly on the web, and to them the current moment of the story is that the dwarf is dead and drowned in the water — and that’s it. That’s all there is to it.
That tells me that that is a readership that only knows it through that medium, the webcomic serialization. They would not have read it throughout any other medium, and to them this is the current continuity of the story.
That’s really interesting, how that works out. The site has links to where people can buy the most recent trade that has the whole story in it already!
JZ: Absolutely. And I hint at them, a few times — when we do a Comixology sale, I’ll let people know they can get caught up. I’ve had some of the readers say to me that they love getting the incremental updates, because then it feels like this familiar little thing. And when the storyline is done, then they’ll buy the trade. They’ll keep a reading copy once its finished, for that particular story arc, but they don’t want to ruin it for themselves because they like getting the little updates three times a week or whatever. That’s just how they enjoy the series. And I think, well, are you reader? Great. That’s all that matters to me in the grand scheme of things. And when I meet people at conventions and they buy the trade paperbacks, they’ll buy them all. They’ll come to me and buy every book, and they’ll hook their friends on it and they’re very, very enthusiastic, and they’ll tell me how they started via the website, and that’s great!
Are you buying us monthly through the comic shops? That’s great. Are you buying the trade paperbacks? That’s great. Are you sending a link around to people? Great. I’m more than happy. As long as you’re partaking in it and enjoying it and telling other people about it, that’s really the key. If you put people in a box and tell them that they can only enjoy it by going to comic shops and getting a monthly subscription, you’re cutting off — lets be honest — the vast majority of people. And that is nothing against comic book stores; I love comic book shops, I love print and I love stores, and our comic readers, the monthly readers, can take pride in the fact that they’re on the cutting edge of exactly where the story is at. They’re getting it first before everyone else. They get the single issues, which always comes with little bonus material in the back. They’re hardcore, they’re right up in the front.
I was thinking about this while you were explaining the dwarf gag and how it’s still ongoing, and I really can’t think of any other modern comic book series that has done what you have done with “Skullkickers,” which is kind of interesting. I think you’ve found a very a viable way, especially when talking earlier about how the series could’ve just been five issues and done, now you’re definitely going to get the whole story in and you’ve found such an interesting way to build the readership around these different mediums — single issues, digital issues, tradewaiters.
Continued belowJZ: The toughest thing is, it makes it much harder to measure the audience. We drift around the bottom of the Diamond 300 list, and sometimes we pop off the bottom for a month at a time, and other times we just skim at the bottom rim. And you’re like, “man, those guys are hovering around the toilet bowl, those aren’t good sales.” But you’re only looking at one particular outlet, you know what I mean? The sales of our digital comics via Comixology and other digital problems, they’re stellar. They’re really, really strong. And I think that is in many ways because of our web outreach, and some of the Comixology sales, things like that.
It can be tough because, man, like everyone, I would love to see great, huge print numbers. I would love to see that we’re selling tens of thousands of comics every month. But our readership is more diffused; it’s across digital, it’s across print, our trade sales are strong. People like reading us in trade, and that’s totally fine. And that’s all there is to it. So it’s a bit more of a longer game, and it’s a bit more of a difficult road, but it’s not just, like, we sold X number of issues, cash in hand and are ready to go. It’s a bit more of a building process.
What I’m hoping is, when I launch my next creator-owned book, I’ll have “Skullkickers” readers who are willing to give it a shot, even if it’s not a comedy and even if it’s not fantasy. Hopefully I’ll have readers who are willing to try something new, because it’s a new creator-owned book, and hopefully they’ll maybe move backwards and try other things like “Skullkickers” that I’ve done. The backlist of my material, because digital doesn’t go out of print and because I’ll have trade paperbacks, you can hopefully discover that Jim Zub writes comics that are enjoyable and therefore find my other things that I’ve done over the years. That’s my hope, that slowly but surely I can build a body of work that the one throughline is that whatever genre I’m working in or whatever things I’m doing, you’ll know it’ll be of a certain quality and enjoyable.
So, I know that you wanted to start teasing what some of these new things that you’re working on are. I think this is as good of a segue as anything to start teasing.
JZ: It’s sort of weird, because this industry is so fueled around new projects and new announcements. So you always want to have something in the hopper, and it feels like if you don’t announce something that you’re losing your mind. It’s like, I’ve got new creator-owned work that’s coming out this year, and we’re just finalizing the details on it but it looks like it’s going to be… I’m pretty confident it’ll be coming out in August. The actual title announcement and stuff will probably be April; art is coming together and logos, and I’m super, super excited about it.
So people have said to me, I’m surprised you don’t have more creator-owned stuff coming. And, well, I’ve got “Makeshift Miracle” at Udon, but otherwise I’ve just been waiting for the right alignment, artist availability and the right person on the right project at the right publisher. I don’t want to just rush something out. I feel like that would drive me crazy, if we just flumped it out there.
I’m doing a Marvel project coming up, which I’m very excited about. I’m doing DC’s “Suicide Squad: Amanda Waller” one-shot. I’m hoping that that’s going to lead to more cool DC stuff. I’ve got a project I’m doing over at Dark Horse that I’m very excited about. I feel like I’m very spread out over the comic business at this point. I’m doing “Samurai Jack” at IDW, but there’s more coming from IDW as well. At this one time, I’m probably writing seven different projects, even if only three or four are coming out right now that people know about. So it’s a busy, busy time in a very exciting way, but it’s frustrating because people keep asking what I’ve got coming, and I’m like “… stuff.” [Laughs] “Things.” I’m not allowed to tell you yet! It’s not up to me. When it comes to something like a Marvel or DC project, you don’t control when that stuff gets announced, you know? So you have to hold it under your hat.
Continued belowBut it also must be kind of nice too, because being this far into “Skullkickers” that you’re looking at the final two arcs, now here’s all this other stuff you have coming up. Whether this year or next year, it’s all just perfect timing.
JZ: That’s my hope, that there won’t be a big gap. Especially with the creator-owned stuff; if I’ve got a new creator-owned book coming in August and one more arc of “Skullkickers” still to go, so they’ll be overlapping each other as they come out. Hopefully we can do that hand-off with readers, so they’ll transfer over or try new stuff. All of it will sort of feed off each other, and that’s very exciting for me as well. It sounds kind of weird; it’s like, in some ways, career-wise, things have changed where I used to be really afraid of if I’d be able to do this. Can I do a comic? Will it get done? Now it’s like, ok, I know I can get a comic done, but can I find the right publisher for the right project and make sure everything is working the way I want it to.
That sounds kind of cocky, though. I can’t walk into a publisher and shout “I’M JIM ZUB.” I’m not at that level. But they’ll return my phone call! [Laughs] They’ll look at my pitch and give me an honest response. There’s dialogue that happens pretty much right from the get-go, rather than me just scratching at the door outside, begging for someone to answer or something like that.
It does make a huge difference. Seriously. Even if a publisher says no, at least you heard something. Yelling into the abyss is far more frustrating.
And I don’t know if you want to go deeper into it, but earlier you mentioned that you might be moving away from comedy, moving away from fantasy. Do you want to tease at all what kind of things you’re going to be doing?
JZ: Yeah… not to say that I dislike either of those things, I love them deeply. I just worry about being typecast. “Jim’s the dude who does the sword stuff and he makes dumb sound effects, hardy har har.” Yes, that is definitely part of my repertoire. Thankfully. And I wear my fantasy stuff like a heart on my sleeve, btu I don’t want people to feel like that’s all I’ve got to offer. That if there’s no dragons, I won’t sign up or whatever.
So, for example, I did the “Amanda Waller” one-shot and I’m working with Brian Cunningham, and I sent him the script. I think he was surprised at how dark it was. He was like, “Man, this is brutal.” Yeah! Isn’t it going to be break? I’m super-excited to write this brutal thing that doesn’t have a speck of humor to be found! I just want people to know that there’s a range to what I can do over a range of different subjects.
The next creator-owned book I’m doing, it is a supernatural story and it’s modern. It is dark. I do think, though, that within any genre there needs to be contrast, so even if you’re telling a particularly dark story, I think humor has its place. So there is good dialogue and fun interactions between characters, but it is not a funny book. It never will be a funny book. It is very much a serious book, though that doesn’t mean characters can’t say amusing things, you know what I mean? That’s kind of where my headspace is at with that one, and I’m really looking forward to people digging in on that. I hope that “Skullkickers” readers are willing to give that a shot as well.
You know, working on “Samurai Jack” at IDW has been such a great experience, because Jack as a show covered such a broad, fertile ground of drama. All the way from serious to ludicrously, cartoonishly silly, and everything in-between. I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to read the “Samurai Jack” comic yet, but most of the issues we’ve done have been relatively comical, but issue three was very serious and dark and kind of brutal. Probably more brutal than they could’ve gotten away with on the cartoon, actually — and that’s the one that we got the most fanmail for. They loved it. They thought it was wonderful and really something totally unexpected. I think that feels good to me, that I can mix things up and surprise people, so hopefully I can keep mixing things up and surprising people.
Continued belowNot to say I don’t ever want to do humor again, don’t get me wrong, but I want to give people a clear indication that I’ve got more to offer.
I definitely see what you’re saying, especially with “Samurai Jack.” It has been years since I’ve watched the show, honestly, but I do like the comic and I do like how I can pick up “Skullkickers” and know that I’ll get a hearty chuckle out of it, whereas “Jack” is more of a nice… It’s definitely a different sort of read.
JZ: And that’s the thing. I want to do things project by project. I don’t want it to be that Jim’s bringing his typical bag of tricks, here we go, same old same old. I don’t want it to feel like that. I want each project to have it’s own flavor and it’s own voice. But beneath that, there’s strong storytelling and characterization. In “Pathfinder” that I’m doing over at Dynamite, it has its humorous moments, but mostly its a classic kind of fantasy adventure group. I like that about it. I like the fact that we can inject moments of humor in and around the adventure. The important thing is, is that it is pretty classic kind of fantasy style adventures; that’s really what we’re going for. So we can have fun moments, we can have serious moments and everything in-between. It’s not just a matter of Jim being the guy who does goofy onomatopoeia.
So what you’re saying is is that your next book is just going to be, like, a sci-fi book where everyone’s angry all the time.
JZ: Pretty much. I think I’m actually going to just call it “Angry Sci-Fi.” I’m very excited. It’s angry scientists, it’s going to be awesome. [Laughs]
No, no. No matter what I’m working on, it always comes from a place of inspiration or joy for me. This new creator-owned book that I’m putting together is a bunch of things that get me excited as a reader. I’m not doing this in a reactionary way, where I sit around and go, “Oh, they think I’m a fantasy guy? I’ll do 180 degrees! I will defy all expectations!” It always has to come from a place fo inspiration. Otherwise it’s not real. I think sometimes, I’m at conventions and they’ll pitch me ideas, and they’ll say “I’ve got an idea for a story,” and they’ll say whatever the story is and it’s fine, and they’ll ask if I think it’ll sell. How are you going to execute it? How’s it going to work? Is it going to have a voice and a quality beneath it? Anyone can have a concept, but it’s what you do to execute that’s going to mean something. Saying that you’re going to do a superhero thing is meaningless; there are good superhero stories and terrible superhero stories, probably even more terrible superhero stories than there are good ones, but the point is what you do with it. Can you make characters that people care about? Can they wait to see the next chapter of the story? And I can’t tell you that via a concept. All I can tell you is, well, hand me a finished book or a finished chapter. Give me something to see and then I’ll tell you, in my opinion, if it is well-executed — and lord knows I’m not the arbiter of quality.
Maybe ask someone who is a little more successful. If Robert Kirkman tells you you have a sellable idea, maybe that’s a little more apt.
Pulling back a bit, back to “Skullkickers,” I can only imagine that now that arc five is ready to come out in March, looking forward to how the series is going to start rolling on the end, I can only imagine that you’re infinitely excited to have “Skullkickers” back on the stands and to get to this point.
JZ: Yeah, it always feels good when we’ve got new issues coming out. The comic book thing is always very funny, because when you don’t have issues coming out you feel like you’re failing the comic club or something. When your friends have lots of books coming out, everyone is announcing and tweeting, “This week, my new book!” And you’re like, ugh, why did we wait to March! You just drive yourself mad because you want to be in there, you want to be on the stands and you want people to be reacting to it.
Continued belowAnd comics have such a short turn around time, compared to most other medium. I don’t know how much you know about the prose industry, but if you sign a book deal for your fiction tomorrow, it would take somewhere between ten months to sixteen or eighteen months for that thing to come out. Can you imagine writing a book and then waiting eighteen months before people can read it? God, man. Comics turn that stuff around and it’s like, we send it off to the printer and four or five weeks later that thing is in your hot little hands. That’s a very cool feeling. It’s a great feeling. It still feels relatively, all things considered, fresh to me, as it is still coming out.
In terms of this next arc, obviously you don’t want to spoil anything, but is there anything you can tease that you’re particularly excited for, or for fans to see?
JZ: The dwarven culture, I’m really happy about that. I wanted to do something that was, like, something that I think “Skullkickers” is really fueled by. We want to take the cliche, we want to take your expectations of fantasy, and we just, I don’t know, give it a purple nurple. We just twist it against your expectations and make it painful and strange and kind of awesome in its own way. I think we do that with dwarves. People love dwarves, they love dwarven culture and the barbaric whatever, and we take that viking-esque ludicrous thing and we just sort of twist it and inject our own little foolishness in there in a way that I think works. I’m very excited to people’s reactions to it, both loving and hating it, because I think anything like this is sort of sacred cows of fantasy. It’s like elbowing your best friend or something; I love fantasy so much, so that’s why I hurt you. I can do these mean things to you because we’re pals!
So there’s a couple things we do with the dwarves that I think is really fun and ludicrous. There’s also the Dwarf himself, our little guy. The fans love him so much, and I love torturing him. It’s that fourth arc again, where he’s naked and running around the underworld and all that sort of stuff. That character seems to have infinite repositories for torture. We can just do awful things to him, and the more things we do to him, the more the fans love it. So we kill him and we crush him and we do terrible things to him, causing him endless amounts of anguish, and the more the better! So in this arc, I’m testing the limits of that. [Laughs] Which makes me very happy.
I also can’t help but notice there is perhaps a particularly famous set of films that feature a large cast of dwarves that could provide, perhaps, some humorous inspiration for parody.
JZ: One of the things I try not to do with “Skullkickers” is, we never do straight out parody. We would never have, like, Bonan the Carbarian. [Laughs] You know what I mean? Sometimes people go really on the nose with their parody, like Scary Movie or whatever where, hey, we have that character you know from that thing but now he’s over here! Personally I don’t find that kind of stuff very funny. As far as humor goes, it seems like the base level. Not that we don’t do stupid; we’ve done fart and jokes, but it’s not like we’re some sort of deep repository of humor ourselves at times. But, whatever.
The point is, we try and avoid just straight out parody. You will not see The Hobbit dwarves running around. I think that’s too easy a target, it’s too simple. And we won’t see the seven dwarves from Snow White or some crap like that. That’s not how we roll with the humor, that’s now what I think is funny. I think it’s more funny to take broader strokes to tropes and storytelling, to play on those elements rather than just say that this guy looks like that other guy. That’s not how we do it.
Continued belowI guess the last question that I have for you is, how much longer until we have the inevitable announcement of Skullkickers the film, or the Skullkickers role-playing game guide book? The next big expansion.
JZ: Right, sure. These conversations happen. It’s fascinating. The first year we launched “Skullkickers,” we had a flurry of people talking to us, but I think that’s just the nature of the new-ness of a property when a bunch of press releases fly around and people talk to you for a little bit. I don’t worry about that stuff; I know that sounds really corny, but I really don’t. You can’t! You’ll drive yourself insane. People talk all the time and sometimes you’ll have productive conversations and sometimes you’re just spinning your wheels, but the most important thing for me is the comic and telling a good story. If I do that well, then anything else that happens to me, I swear to god, it’s just a bonus.
The Munchkin thing was just great synergy, and I love the Steve Jackson people; they’ve been very good to us. We’ve talked to videogame companies and boardgame companies and movie people and cartoon people, and these conversations are always… You can sit back and dream a little bit and get excited about it, but even at the best of times these things are glacial in terms of their progress, so I don’t worry about it. To me it’s about, lets tell this comic book story — and the best thing we can do on that front is finish the sixth arc, finish the complete story, and then it’s a complete thing. So if a movie company or a game company wants to look at it, they can read the whole thing from start to finish and they can decide what it is and what they like about it and how they could, if they were going to adapt it, how they would do it. Rather than just, like, midway through going, “Oh, it’s a thing and you really want to do it! Promise!”
I feel like, for me, it’s just about making an awesome comic, and then whatever else happens down the line is going to happen or its not. That’s great. I’m not against it, obviously. Far be it from me to say I wouldn’t want to see all kinds of amazing “Skullkickers” stuff and movies and merchandise and what have you, but that’s not why I got into this business. That’s not my primary goal. So, yeah. The shortest answer is: nothing is on the horizon, in the immediate, and I’m totally cool with that. I’m cool with just making fun-ass comics and wrecking fantasy as we know it.
Well I’m still going to keep my eye out for the “Skullkickers”/”Rat Queen” crossover solicit.
JZ: You know what’s really funny is, that was the first thing everyone said! [Laughs] I felt weirdly bad for Kurtis and Roc, because they’re doing a good book all on their own and it doesn’t deserve to be compared to anything. I mean that, totally outright. It’s not “Skullkickers” with girls. My book is for 12+ and it’s for young me who was playing Dungeons and Dragons when I was 10 or 11 years old, and for adult players of games and fantasy lovers. Kurtis and Roc is doing a much more mature — and I don’t mean too mature, it’s stupid in its own way, laughable, hilarious — but lots of swearing and sex, a much more mature reader approach to fantasy. I think it’s great, it’s such a fun book, but it is not… You could do a crossover, sure, but it’s not necessarily as natural a fit as everyone assumes. I think that both books deserve to stand on their own merits.
Just because, from sheer momentum we’ve been around longer, so we’re much more established, and I totally think that the first thing everyone said was, “When are you guys going to do a crossover?” And Kurtis and I talked about it, and the honest discussion was sort of, hey, lets make sure “Rat Queens” is very well-established before we do that sort of thing rather than feeling one book is trailing behind the other in any sort of way, or even carrying the other. Both books should be their own well-established thing before we even attempt to do anything like that.
Continued below“Skullkickers” #25 goes on sale March 26th with Diamond Order Code JAN140544. The FOC is March 2nd, so get to the shops and get those orders in!
You can catch up on “Skullkickers” digitally on Comixology, for free as a webcomic or you can grab physical trades and hardcovers care of the Zub right here.
